"Zelazny, Roger - Amber 09 - Knight Of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Rinaldo in on this part?"
"No, you two had grown too chummy by then. I was afraid he'd warn you."
I thought about it for another minute or so, then, "What went wrong?" I
asked.
"The one thing I'd never have guessed," she said. "Julia really had talent.
A few lessons from Victor, and she was better than he was at anything he could
do--except painting. Hell! Maybe she paints, too. I don't know. I'd dealt myself
a wild card, and it played itself."
I shuddered. I thought of my conversation with the ty'iga at Arbor Horse,
back when it was possessing Vinta Bayle. "Did Julia develop the abilities she
sought?" it had asked me. I'd told it that I didn't know. I'd said that she'd
never shown any signs.... And shortly thereafter I'd remembered our meeting in
the supermarket parking lot and the dog she told to sit that may never have
moved again.... I'd recalled this, but--
"And you never noticed any indication of her talent?" Jasra ventured.
"I wouldn't say that," I replied as I began to realize why things were as
they were. "No, I wouldn't say that."
...Like that time at Baskin-Robbins when she caused a change of flavors
'twixt cone and lip. Or the storm she'd stayed dry in without an umbrella...
She frowned a puzzled frown and narrowed her eyes as she stared. "I don't
understand," she said. "If you knew, you could have trained her yourself. She
was in love with you. You would have been a formidable team."
I writhed internally She was right, and I had suspected, had probably even
known, but I'd been suppressing it. I'd possibly even triggered its onset
myself, with that shadow walk, with my body energies....
"It's tricky," I said, "and very personal."
"Oh. Matters of the heart are either very simple or totally inscrutable to
me," she said. "There doesn't seem to be a middle ground."
"Let's stipulate simple," I told her. "We were already breaking up when I
noticed the signs, and I'd no desire to call up the power in an ex-lover who
might one day want to practice on me."
"Understandable," Jasra said. "Very. And ironic in the extreme."
"Indeed," Mandor observed, and with a gesture he caused more steaming
dishes to appear before us. "Before you get carried away with a narrative of
intrigue and the underside of the psyche, I'd like you to try a little breast of
quail drowned in Mouton Rothschild, with a bit of wild rice and a few amusing
asparagus tips."
I had driven her to her studies by showing her another layer of reality, I
realized. And I had driven her away from me because I had not really trusted her
enough to tell her the truth about myself. I suppose this said something about
my capacity for love as well as trust. But I had felt this all along. There was
something else. There was more....
"This is delicious," Jasra announced.
"Thank you." He rose, rounded the table, and refilled her glass manually
rather than use a levitation trick. As he did, I noticed that the fingers of his
left hand lightly brushed her bare shoulder. He sloshed a little into my glass
as an afterthought then and went back and sat down.
"Yes, excellent," I observed as I continued my quick introspect through the
dark glass suddenly cleared.
I had felt something, had suspected something from the beginning, I knew